Page 49 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

They bowed to her, every one.

At the gate, four of the jarl's guardsmen had already taken up their posts. Their captain came forward and spoke quietly with Torstein.

"Thorfinn's men," he told her when he came back. "Two at the gate and two on the cliff path through the night. No one comes up this hill without my leave."

"Because of the Brotherhood?"

"Because of everything." He did not elaborate, and she did not ask. She had seen the look on Estrid's face on the shore.

Thora bustled forward. "There's hot food laid in the main house, and water heated for bathing. Mutton stew and fresh bread and the last of the honey."

"Thank you, Thora. That will be all tonight."

Thora glanced at Samira, then back at her lord, and something knowing crossed her face. "Aye," she said. "It will." And she shooed the rest of the household back to their own hearths.

The yard emptied. The guards withdrew to the gate. Torstein and Samira were left alone before the door of the main house.

***

SHE DID NOT MOVE TOWARD it.

He felt her go still against his side. Not with awe. With something more careful. She was looking at the size of the house, at the outbuildings, at the scale of what a man of his standing would keep.

"Torstein." She chose her words slowly, so there could be no mistaking them. "It is a large house. For one man."

"Aye."

"In the lands I come from, a man of wealth does not always keep a house for one." Her chin lifted. "How many others am I to share it with?"

Torstein turned to face her fully.

"None."

She searched his face.

"Hear me, Samira, for I will say it only the once and then you need never wonder again." He took both her hands in his. "There are no other wives. There are no thralls in my bed and never have been. The servants and the tenants have their own homes, and that is where they stay. This house I have kept for myself alone. No woman has ever slept beneath its roof. No woman has ever lain in the bed within it."

Her brow drew together. "Not one? A man such as you?"

"I did not say I was a monk." A wry warmth touched his mouth. "Nor a virgin. I'll not lie to you, for a marriage built on lies is no marriage at all. I was young once, and hot-blooded, and there were women in my youth. But not one of them ever crossed this threshold. From the moment I laid the first board of this house, I set it aside for the wife and children I meant to have. It was the one thing I would not sully."

"And in later years?"

He let out a slow breath. "In later years the wanting changed. The offers still came. I stopped accepting them. It has been a long time, Samira, since I took any woman to my furs. The desire for a night's warmth simply left me, and in its place grew a different hunger. I did not want just any willing body. I wanted my true wife. The one this house was built for." He shook his head. "The longing for her overtook everything else. And I did not even know her name."

"You built a home," she said slowly, "for a woman you had never met."

"I did. I made up my mind long ago that when I took a wife she would be the only one. No second wife, no thrall to cause strife, no children set against each other under one roof. I saw enough of that in other houses. I wanted what my father and mother have. One bed. One woman. A bond that holds for a lifetime."

He looked up at the dark house.

"Every winter it stood empty and I lived in it alone, and I told myself she was out there somewhere. Some years I began to think I was waiting on a woman who did not exist." His voice roughened. "And then I found you, at the far end of the world. I did not wait in vain, ástin mín. I only did not know yet where to look."

Samira pressed her lips together, and he saw the effort it took her not to weep.

"I could have taken you to wife properly at Thurso," he said quietly. "In Hrafn's hall, in that bed. I did not want it there. I wanted our first night to be here, in the house I built, in the bed I made for us. Where our children will be made." He brushed his thumb across her knuckles. "Does that seem foolish to you?"

"No. It does not."